Opening Sessions

Room: E-Building, E-266
Presenter(s): Carrie Fox; Devon Cahill; John Parssinen

Members of LaGuardia’s Office of Grants and Sponsored Programs and affiliated staff from ACE and Academic Affairs will provide you with the tools you need to identify grant opportunities, tips for incorporating student career readiness into your grant proposals, and strategies for strengthening your project through cross-departmental and cross-divisional collaboration. Case examples of past successful grants at LaGuardia will be highlighted. A review of the internal processes and approvals required for submitting a grant at LaGuardia will be included.

Room: E-Building, E-265
Presenter(s): Daniel Boudon; Monika Ekiert; Hector Fernandez; Andrea Irias; Regina Lehman; Kevin Mark; Justin Rogers-Cooper; Poppy Slocum

The recent renewal of the college’s General Education rubrics speaks to the philosophy behind LaGuardia’s culture of “assessing for learning.” Our Institutional Learning Outcomes (ILOs) address three major areas of learning: (1) student learning from first to last semester, (2) the teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom, and (3) the learning within and across programs, majors, or disciplines. Assessing for learning refers to the cycle of inquiry, data collection, feedback, and evidence-based actions that ask faculty and staff to improve andragogy, curriculum, and ILOs continuously, with the expectation that the process will lead to improved student success. Yet, this success cannot be separated from career preparation. To fill the gap in our collective thinking about assessing for learning and career preparation, this presentation will spotlight the ways in which LaGuardia’s General Education core competencies and abilities are aligned with the vital 21-st century career readiness skills. The workshop, led by the Assessment Leadership Team members, will invite the attendees to engage with the renewed college rubrics and reflect on the existing connections between academic success and career readiness.

Room: E-Building, E-262
Presenter(s): Leigh Garrison-Fletcher; Lucy McNair; Ljubica Depovic; Daniel Capic; Vanya Petrova; Steven Cosares; Lucie Mingla; Dora Trujillo

Faculty who completed the Language Across the Curriculum for STEM CTL seminar will present projects highlighting language-aware pedagogy’s role in career preparedness. This approach is rooted in translanguaging pedagogy – an inclusive method that encourages students to leverage all their language skills in the learning process and future professional endeavors.
This strategy is crucial for linguistically diverse students who may underestimate the professional value of their language backgrounds. We aim to empower multilingual students to view their diverse language skills as career assets rather than liabilities. By embracing students’ full linguistic repertoires, we help them recognize their multilingualism as a competitive advantage in the job market.
STEM faculty will showcase translanguaging implementation in their classes to enhance students’ career readiness. In one math course, students will use AI tools to understand logarithmic functions, mirroring the tech-savvy approach valued in STEM careers. Another math class will have students create a multi-dialect and multilingual glossary, a skill applicable to international business and global STEM collaborations. A physics class will engage students in creating a multilingual dictionary, developing skills crucial for technical writing and cross-cultural scientific collaboration.

Participants will then brainstorm ways to incorporate translanguage pedagogy, focusing on strategies to improve students’ employability and career prospects in STEM fields. This session equips educators with tools to prepare students for the linguistically diverse global workforce.

Room: E-Building, E-260
Presenter(s): Claudette Davis & Bindu Pillai

The rapidly evolving job market demands graduates with a strong foundation in academic knowledge and the practical skills employers seek. This workshop empowers and equips educators to bridge this gap by introducing career readiness integration strategies/best practices and insights necessary to effectively prepare students for successful transitions from academic settings to professional careers. By aligning educational objectives with industry demands, faculty and staff can play a pivotal role in enhancing the employability and career outcomes of their students.

Goals and Objectives: The goals of the workshop are to provide participants with informational knowledge on careers. Secondly, the NACE competencies are used by employers to screen future employees, namely college graduates. The top skills employers find lacking in graduates include critical thinking skills and communication skills. During the hands-on workshop we will provide templates, surveys, and resources that can be incorporated into a broad range of disciplines. We will also discuss the use of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) in students’ career-readiness preparation. 

Room: E-Building, E-229
Presenter(s): Pablo Avila; Sue Livingston; Paul Fess; Ximena Gallardo; Jaime Riccio; Patricia Sokolski; Derek Stadler

In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, preparing students for successful careers and lifelong learning requires innovative approaches to education. This session showcases faculty who will share how they plan to integrate AI tools into their teaching practices.  Participants will learn about the benefits and challenges of integrating AI tools in several academic disciplines; explore ways to ensure and assess student learning and critical thinking when using AI tools, recognizing the importance of teaching AI literacy and ethics alongside AI technical skills.  They will see how introducing AI tools in their classrooms can play an important role in preparing students for successful careers in an AI-augmented world, embodying the Opening Session’s focus on comprehensive guidance and support for student success.  By exposing students to AI tools in a guided, educational environment, faculty are providing support and equipping students with the skills, knowledge, and experiences necessary to thrive in an AI world.

Faculty AI project titles include:

RealWorld DiffEq: AI-Enhanced Problem Solving, DataMentor AI: Accessible Statistics Learning, AI-Log Explorer: Mathematics Real-Life Applications with Multilingual AI Assistance, SwingCraft AI: Java Games with Smart Assistance, Revamping ENG103: The Research Paper – A Metacognitive Approach to Integrating Generative AI Tools in the Research Process, Virtual Sensei: AI Tutoring for Modern Language Learning, AI Grammar Buddy: Personalized Self-Tutoring, BioBoost: AI-Crafted Guides to Transform Learning in Biology, Using AI-Generated Texts as Bridges to Understanding for Deaf-Student Readers, Beyond Google: AI Tools for Effective Speech Research and Composition, AI and the Bard: Reimagining Close Reading in ENG102.

Room: E-Building, E-234
Presenter(s): Marta Kowalczyk; Pablo Avila; Olga Aksakalova

How do global learning and experiential classroom activities prepare students for an evolving workplace? Centering this question, the session will address the ways in which faculty and staff can facilitate career readiness through practices that emphasize global and experiential learning. We will introduce an interactive model of global and experiential learning known as Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), a high-impact practice that targets multiple career readiness competencies outlined by the National Association of Colleges and Universities (NACE):
 
Communication; Critical Thinking; Career & Self-Development; Equity and Inclusion; Leadership; Professionalism; Teamwork, and Technology
 
We will discuss examples of effective COIL projects within and outside of the classroom that can be designed and implemented in close alignment with the NACE competencies. We will begin with an overview of NACE competencies and proceed to illustrate strategies for their effective integration into student-centered activities. Moreover, we will discuss the “COIL and Career” Workshop that guides students to reflect on and articulate how their international and intercultural learning can benefit them professionally.
Since the “COIL and Career” Workshop was developed in collaboration with Center for Career and Professional Development (CCPD), the presentation will highlight effective strategies for collaboration between faculty/program coordinators and CCPD staff and share lessons learned from such collaboration.​
 
Participants will explore specific ways of integrating COIL and career readiness into their work and learn about opportunities to engage in professional development on the subject. 

Room: E-Building, E-227
Presenter(s): Jennifer Mitchell Mayer; Desiree Rodriguez

Addressing student mental health is essential for fostering both academic and career success. In this engaging and highly interactive workshop, participants will explore the vital link between positive mental health and academic achievement.

Faculty and staff play a crucial role in this process, as their support significantly impacts students’ well-being, self-esteem, motivation, concentration, and future planning. Participants will learn how mental health conditions, such as anxiety and depression, can affect student learning and how to identify early warning signs, including serious indicators of suicide or self-harm.

The workshop will focus on responding to students in distress with compassion and without stigma. By providing best practices for managing student distress, connecting them to appropriate resources, and promoting a campus-wide culture of mental health awareness, the workshop aims to empower faculty and staff to positively influence student well-being and support their academic and professional growth.

Room: E-Building, E-258
Presenter(s): Thomas Cleary; Tomonori Nagano; Molly Rosner; Liv Veazey

LaGuardia has a rich history of preparing students for emerging careers with a keen focus on people skills. While workforce development often equips students with technical know-how, the workforce in the 21st century also requires the adaptability needed for a dynamically changing job market. Even the latest job-training programs for the “future of work” quickly become outdated. To stay flexible and adapt to technological advances, “soft skills” are in high demand from employers. These essential skills – communication, teamwork, critical thinking, and interpersonal abilities – are foundational to a Liberal Arts education and crucial for adapting to evolving job landscapes.

The Oral History Seminar in 2023-2024, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), supports student career readiness, professional skills, and career pathways after graduation by focusing on these essential soft skills. Our presentation will explore the transformative role of oral history in fostering these essential skills. The Seminar supported faculty in integrating oral history methods into their pedagogy. Oral history, traditionally a means of preserving first-hand testimonies, has emerged as a powerful pedagogical tool in recent years. Oral history enables students to listen empathetically, critically analyze mainstream narratives, and develop crucial interpersonal skills.

We will share lesson plans and projects from our inaugural Seminar, highlighting how oral history enriches curriculum and promotes people skills. We will also introduce how faculty have incorporated interviews as course materials and encouraged students to conduct their own interviews. This could involve using interviews as course material or tasking students with conducting their own interviews. These initiatives aim to cultivate adaptable, well-rounded individuals capable of thriving in a mutable workforce.

Room: E-Building, E-264
Presenter(s): Doreen Kolomechuk

This workshop will focus on presenting interactive career exploration activities that can be used by faculty, staff, and counselors in classrooms, career workshops, or one-on-one advisement to facilitate career exploration and career research. A list of widely utilized and reliable career resources will be provided (e.g., O*Net Online). In addition, some more novel ways students can explore career information will be described. Further, participants will have the opportunity to view excerpts of interviews held with LaGuardia alumni concentrating on their career development insights and successes. Throughout the presentation, the presenter’s recent fellowship leave work in conducting career research, interviewing LaGuardia alumni, and working to develop an Open Educational Resource (OER) related to career exploration and career development will be discussed.